Among the many things that human beings have in common is a desire to be better off, to find or create a better future than the one they presently inhabit. In 1982, philosopher Karl Popper gave voice and substance to this desire in, In Search of a Better World. The first sentence spells out his premise: “All living things are in search of a better world…They are trying to improve their situation.” Since this is a desire of all living things, and not just human beings, it is clear that it is a universal motivator.
For Popper, however, the search for a better world is not only about seeking a better life in order to be more comfortable or satisfied. He believes that our survival depends on a successful search. Popper explains this belief by going back some 4 billion years when life first appeared on the planet. Whatever the form of that earliest life, he suggests that it’s survival was constantly at risk. Like all forms of life up to and including the present time, in the beginning life was confronted with threats to its continuing existence. It’s future depended upon being able to address those threats successfully. “We can see that life…brings something completely new into the world,” wrote Popper, “something that did not previously exist: problems and active attempts to solve them.” Nothing has changed in this regard during the past 4 billions years. Problems exist today and threaten our existence as they have through history. During the eons of time up to the present day, the survival of all forms of life on the planet has depended on success in acquiring the capabilities to identify the problems that threaten them and make successful attempts to solve them. Those that are successful, continue to live and to evolve. Those that are not, disappear.
All Life is Problem Solving
This logic – that problems exist, and because they exist, our well-being, and even our survival, is threatened – seems to have led Popper to broaden his emphasis beyond just searching for a better world. In All Life is Problem Solving, published in 1994, he expanded his attention to include what was required to find this better world: the “completely new” set of skills for finding and solving problems. Since “all life is problem solving, he concludes that the only way to be successful in our search for a better world to be good at problem solving, to be able to confront successfully the myriad of problems that we will encounter along the way. Life demands that we solve the ones we can solve and manage the ones we cannot. All actions of human beings, he believes, begin as attempts to solve problems. Popper’s response to this demand is gratitude: “I owe everything to my beloved problems,” he wrote. “I really fell in love with my first problem…and after I obtained a solution, I fell in love with my various other problems.”
The Essence of Leadership
Not only are human beings everywhere attempting to find ways of becoming better off themselves, but leaders are also expected to contribute, directly or indirectly, to the well-being of the tens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of people that either report to them or work in the organizations and institutions which they lead. They are expected to ensure that there are profits for their shareholders; for creating and maintaining effective organizations and institutions in order to make that happen; for contributing to the well-being of the society which makes possible their very existence; and for helping the people who work in these organizations find a better future for the organization as well as for themselves. The way leaders are supposed to make all this happen is to be alert for the problems that stand in the way of progress, then find ways to solve them. Philosopher and economist E. F. Schumacher sums it up this way: “To live means to cope, to contend and keep level with all sorts of circumstances, many of them difficult. Difficult circumstances present problems, and it might be said that living means, above all else, dealing with problems.” In Schumacher’s view, grappling with problems rises to the position of “above all else,” making it the most important means of ensuring success in one’s search for a better world.
Most Fall Short
While there is an almost infinite number of skills, talents, and capabilities that leaders must acquire and master in order to be successful, finding and solving problems is the meta-level ability: Every challenge that leaders face, in one way or another, is either a problem or connected to one. And most of them are wicked. Yet even a cursory examination of the performance of most leaders leads one to conclude that most fall short. Author and consultant Mike Myatt is less generous. In an article published in 2013 in Forbes Magazine, Myatt writes, “Let’s cut right to the chase – The biggest problems leaders face is problem solving itself…[and] most leaders are woefully inept when it comes to problem solving.” Being “woefully inept” means that few problems are managed or solved successfully. And as a result, progress toward finding a better world is compromised.
“Vastly” Better Off?
Since it is a given that there is no one way to become better off, but rather an infinite number of choices available, are there some ways that are superior to others? Jay Rosen, professor of Journalism at New York University, thinks so. In an article published in 2012, he named one way that he believed should be on everyone’s list: “We would be vastly better off,” he wrote,” if we understood what wicked problems are and learned to distinguish between them and regular (or “tame”) problems.” Rosen makes the explicit connection between gaining an understanding of wicked problems and becoming better off. But not just better off, but vastly better off. Why vastly? It’s not complicated. Since most of the serious problems we face at work, in relationships, and in our lives, are wicked and not tame, it is wicked problems at the center of most of “sturm und drang” that interfere with our search for a better world. Once we understand what wicked problems are and how they are different from tame ones, we are much better prepared to do something about them. With this knowledge, making things better becomes a real possibility. In other words, until we understand what wicked problems are – and what they are not – we are severely handicapped in our efforts to get to a better place. Without a fundamental understanding of wicked problems and without the tools needed to take appropriate action to address them, we remain wedded to efforts that not only are largely unproductive and futile, but, often make things worse
Peanut and Jelly Sandwiches vs. The Executive Committee
As we know, almost all problems can be placed in one of two categories: tame or wicked. Among the most fundamental differences between them was identified in a comment by Former Secretary of State George Schultz quoted earlier: There are huge differences, he said, between “problems you can solve [and] problems you can only work at.”
This fundamental difference between “solving” and “working at” becomes clear when we examine two problem situations that affected two different groups of people. In February of 2015, the best team in professional basketball, the Golden State Warriors, had a record of 44 wins and only 5 losses. While flying back to California after a game, an important post-game ritual for the players on the Warriors team was indulging in an astonishing number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Imagine their surprise and frustration, when they discovered after a hard fought victory, that there was no peanut butter or jelly to found anywhere on the plane. The players were at first mystified, and then furious. “Other teams have real problems,” sniffed Ben Cohen in the Wall Street Journal, “and the Warriors have peanut-butter-and-jelly problems.” Actually, for the Warriors, the absence of peanut butter and jelly was a real problem.
As it turned out, the problem originated with the owners of the team. After winning the NBA championship in 2014, they looked for every way to improve in 2015. They bought in new health and fitness coaches who decided that peanut butter and jelly had to go – too much fat and too much sugar. What they forgot was to involve the team members in the decision. When Steve Kerr, the superstar of the team, quickly made clear that the sandwiches would not be banned, they miraculously reappeared on the team post-game menu. Problem solved!
An example of a problem that could not be solved but only worked on occurred in 2014 at the Executive Team meeting shortly after Satya Nadella was named as the new CEO of Microsoft. “What is the purpose of this team?” asked Nadella? “Why does it exist? Are we adding value to this company? And if yes, what is it? If no, what should it be.” Nadella’s questions identified issues, while extremely important, that had no correct answers, and since he offered questions, with no answers, it became clear that he expected that the team would come up with it’s own answers. And while, these answers would no be correct in any objective sense, they would be their best efforts.
After what must have been interesting and probably intense discussions. the team answered Nadella’s questions. As Nadella put it, “The framework we came up with is the notion that our purpose is to bring clarity, alignment and intensity. What is it we want to get done? Are we aligned in order to get it done? And are we pursuing that with intensity.?” While there were undoubtedly hundreds or even thousands of different answers to Nadella’s questions, none would “correct” in the traditional way of defining correct. Yet, for that executive team, they were “correct.” For Microsoft, these values also represented goals to be pursued, goals that could never be fully reached but only worked on. Microsoft would never be finished with the challenges of increasing clarity, alignment or intensity in the company.
On the Nature of Wicked Problems
Flying home without peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while important, was a tame problem and the Warriors quickly solved it. On the other hand, determining what is the value of an executive committee for a company is a wicked one. As we learned in an earlier chapter, wicked problems not only have no correct answers, but the “best” ones is the best that can be done.
Other important characteristics of wicked problems that have been previously discussed and are important to keep in mind are:
– There are no stopping rules. For wicked problems in families, marriages, teams, organizations, and governments there is always more to do. Work goes on until people grow tired, lose interest, when budgets are cut, or when they die.
– Without any rules for stopping, there is no ending to be reached. If “solving” means that an end the problem has been reached and they people are finished with it, then wicked problems are never solved.
– The most accurate statement that can be made is, ‘While things are improving,
there is more to be done.”
– There is no way to know whether a “solution” for a wicked problem is useful
until it has been implemented.
– Solutions can only be understood as temporary arrangements put in place to improve things. Since situations change, all solutions must be revisited and revised in order to expect continuous improvement.
– Every “solution” to a wicked problem is a one-shot operation. There is no”trial and
error.” Every attempt counts.
– Every wicked problem is unique. No one has ever seen it before.
– There is no finite set of possible solutions; they are infinite, limited only by
one’s imagination.
– There is no single “root cause” for a wicked problems, but a multitude of causes. Every wicked problem can also be a symptom of another problems.
– While tame problems have beginnings, middles, and ends, wicked problems are, as Robert Frost once wrote, “only middles.”
– Those who choose to work on wicked problems, or are assigned to work on them, have no right to be wrong. If they do not get it right the first time, they are usually punished.
A summary of these and other characteristics of wicked problems makes clear why they are so difficult: Since those who are involved will see the problem differently, there is no single or correct way to view or define it; since it is almost impossible to say what the problem is or to define it clearly, the perspectives from which it is seen and the way that it is framed will change the nature of the problem as well as the proposed remedies available; there are inevitably many stakeholders, each with skin in the game, and each wanting a different outcome.
Larry Cuban, research scholar at Stanford, defines wicked problems this way:
Wicked problems are ill-defined, ambiguous, complicated, interconnectedpacked with potential conflict. In organizations [and elsewhere] wicked
problems arise when people compete for limited resources, hold conflicting values,
and wrestle with diverse expectations held by others about what [we] should
be doing.
If people find themselves working with others in situations where there are limited resources, conflicting values, where people hold diverse expectations for each others, then the chances are very good that they are in the middle of a wicked problem.
Leadership is a Wicked Problem
The primary and most important purpose of leaders, be they in families, teams, organizations, or nations, is to identify the important problems that are interfering with successful movement toward goals , and then make sure they are addressed successfully. Everything leaders do is connected in one way or another with this critical responsibility. If there were no problems – if things worked and worked out as they should or as we wanted them to – there would be no need for leaders. This idea may seem strange in a society where leaders occupy the highest rungs of prestige, power, and economic reward. Yet the omnipresence of leaders, their importance, and the deference and ecomonic rewards we offer them, is evidence that we have problems for which solutions are needed, but that we, as individuals, have no way of finding them or how to put them in place. Few things work as we expect them to – education, health care, work teams, business organizations, and governments are examples – and so our hope is that our leaders will find ways to solve our problems.
Increasingly, academics and practitioners are becoming aware that the most of the problems that we expect leaders to solve are wicked and not tame. Here is John C. Camillus, professor at the University of Pittsburg: “In business, some problems are easy, some problems are hard, and some problems are so complex, so intractable…that they are best described as “wicked.” Wicked problems, Camillus writes, are basically unsolvable, making the usual tools problem solving in business “virtually impotent.”
Author and consultant Marty Neumeier relies upon a biological metaphor: “The world’s wicked problems crowd us like piranha,” he writes, forcing their way into our lives and threatening us with disaster. This is especially true in the world of business, where leaders and managers must face such wicked problems as “breakneck change, omniscient customers, balkanized markets, rapacious shareholders, traitorous employees, regulatory headlocks, and pricing pressure from desperate competitors with little to lose and everything to gain.”
British professor and organizational theorist Keith Grint makes a case that wicked problems are the core challenges of leadership: “Management might be focussed on solving complex but essentially Tame problems in a unilinear fashion: applying what worked last time. But leadership is essentially about facing Wicked problems that are literarily ‘unmanageable.'” And not only unmangeable, he adds, but unsolvable as well. Since there is no rule for stopping work on a wicked problem, “we often end up having to admit that we cannot solve wicked problems.”
In May of 2015, newly appointed provost at the University of Southern California, Michael Quick, challenged the Board of Trustees, the faculty, and the students by posing a crucial question: What is to be USC’s contribution to the community, the nation and to the world? He then answered his own question: We must tackle the most important problems facing us in the 21st century. “These are called wicked problems,” he said, and include “poverty, food and water security, obesity, social justice, cancer, sustainability and climate change, terrorism, cyber security, aging and dementia. These are the big, complex problems facing the 21st century.”
The leaders and authors quoted above have discovered something important. As the 21st century progresses, we can expect to encounter more difficult and complex problems, and most of them will be wicked. Our leaders will be expected to deal with them. Will they be ready?
Leadership Qualities for Wicked Problems
Complicating this issue is a paradox: even as we hope, expect, even demand that our leaders solve our problems, the problems we assign to them are wicked and therefore cannot be solved. Addressing this paradox with some measure of success will require people with special knowledge and skill. Here is Jay Rosen’s view of some the talents and abilities they must possess:
Wicked problems demand people who are creative, pragmatic, flexible, and collaborative…They know that there’s no right place to start, so they simply start somewhere and see what happens. They understand that they’re more likely to understand the problem after it’s solved than before. They don’t expect a [correct] solution; they keep working until they’ve found something that’s good enough. They’re never convinced that they know enough to solve the problem so they’re constantly testing their ideas on different stakeholders.
Carly Fiornia, CEO of Hewlett-Packard from 1999 to 2005, added several additional qualities that she saw as important for effective leadership: “Leadership…is about problem-solving and making progress and changing the order of things for the better, which means it’s about humility and empathy and collaboration.”
Since most of the problems leaders face are wicked and not tame, leaders who have acquired these abilities and talents and are able to apply them, greatly increase their chances of success. Yet here, once again, many leaders fall short: Many prefer individualism to collaboration, dogmatism instead of flexibility, certainty in place of humility, ruthlessness over empathy, linear thinking instead of creativity, and, as a final nail in the coffin, they believe that they have the answers to what the problems are and what should be done about them and so are disinclined to listen to others.
Adding Value
Each day, not only leaders but all human beings, are engaged in trying to “change the order of things for the better.” Because of the knowledge, skills and personal qualities that some possess, they are are able to make important contribution: they add value to the situations in which they find themselves. Others who lack relevant knowledge or skills, instead of adding value, often subtract it, leaving situations worse off than before. Over time, those people who are seen as adding value are invited to stay and continue the game. They are the first ones chosen to be on the team. Those who regularly make things worse can expect to be marginalized, ignored or dismissed.
Leaders Adding Value
Leaders – and employees as well – are expected to add rather than subtract value to the organizations which they lead and in which they work. High on the list of ways that leaders do this is to take the lead in setting and reaching goals. Without clear goals and the means to address them, there can be no progress, only random and directionless activities. Once goals are decided upon, however, new problems emerge: first, serious obstacles stand in the way, and second, the problems these obstacles present are almost always wicked. It follows, then, that the most important way for leaders to add value to an organization is be proficient in grappling successfully with an endless parade of wicked problems.
Once leaders become aware of the existence and nature of these wicked problems and gain confidence and skill in dealing with them, their value to the organization increases exponentially. Not only are they more capable of grappling with them themselves, but they are are also prepared to teach others to find ways to increase their own confidence and skill.
Here are several of many critical insights about wicked problems, when passed on to others and put into practice, increase the organization’s capabilities to address wicked problems:
– Leaders have no special knowledge that will permit them to define problems or determine the solutions. They must rely on others.
– Neither are there experts or consultants who can solve them. What emerges from this is an awareness that “we are the ones we are looking for, and we the ones who do something about our wicked problems.”
-Giving up the idea of “solving” the problem and replacing it with the idea that what is possible is “continuous improvement” can be both discouraging or energizing. Yet it is what it is.
-Replacing the idea of “solution” as an end to problems with the understanding that what is available are temporary arrangements put in place to make things better and is an important contribution. What follows, then, is in the future, these “solutions” must be revisited and redesigned.
-Problems are not “discovered” through analysis or experimentation. They must be “created” and defined by those who are knowledgeable about the problem situation and committed to working together to make things better.
-In order to work successfully on wicked problems, it is important that a wide range of ideas, preferences, and opinions are openly shared. People should be prepared for the appearance of disagreement, conflict, controversy and even confrontation, and be able to take advantage of these in order to move toward consensus.
Making a Difference
Business organizations are inevitably overrun with problems. When a team leader brings one to the table, the first question should be, “Is this a tame problem or a wicked one?” The answer to this question is crucial and leads to a next series of questions: What should be done? By whom? When? For how long? How will we know when we are finished? The answers to these questions will determine everything that follows, and set in place all the possibilities for success or failure.
Many of the problems that leaders grapple with each day, and will continue to grapple with into the future, are wicked. This is no small thing, nor can it be ignored: “The narrow-gauge mindset of the past,” writes Marty Neumeier, “is insufficient for today’s wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written. Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.”
* Adapted from Bentley, Joseph C., (2019). “Leadership is a Wicked Problem.” Graziadio Business Review, Vol 22, Iss 3. Accessed at https://pepperdine.edu/2019/12/leadership-is-a-wicked-problem/.